14th century hippocras for the 21st century consumer

Happy Solstice everyone!

Down here, of course, it is Yule.  Mulled wine is traditionally associated with midwinter, so this week I tried the medieval ancestor of the mulled wines we enjoy today: a hippocras recipe from 14th century France.

This recipe comes to us from the Jérôme Pichon’s book Le Ménagier de Paris, dated to around 1393 CE.

HIPPOCRAS. To make powdered hippocras, take a quarter-ounce of very fine cinnamon, hand-picked by tasting it, an ounce of very fine meche ginger and an ounce of grains of paradise, a sixth of an ounce of nutmeg and galingale together, and pound it all together. And when you want to make hippocras, take a good half-ounce or more of this powder and two quarter-ounces of sugar, and mix them together, and a quart of wine as measured in Paris.And note that the powder and the sugar mixed together make "duke's powder".

English translation by Janet Hinson and available here.

I chose it because it’s simple to make, and because unlike some hippocras recipes the quantity of sugar involved is reasonable.  Some of these recipes were pure bottled diabetes.  Since most of us today buy our wine in 750ml bottles, I've developed a modernized version of Pichon’s recipe which makes a 750ml bottle of hippocras.


Ingredients:

1 bottle of wine (I've used a merlot rosé - see the section on red wine to find out why)
½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
⅓ tablespoon ground ginger
⅓ tablespoon grains of paradise (or substitute a mixture of black pepper and ground cardamom – grains of paradise usually aren’t readily available today)
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg and galangal (if you don’t have galangal just use nutmeg, as galangal tastes somewhat like ginger anyway)
¾ tablespoon of brown sugar

Heat a small amount of wine and stir in the sugar and spices until the sugar dissolves.  Add the rest of the wine, and strain the mixture through a cloth to remove the sediment.  This is an important step which Pichon’s recipe omits to mention, because he assumed all his readers would know you have to strain hippocras.  Its name actually comes from the “Hippocratic sleeve” used to strain it.  You can make a Hippocratic sleeve at home by placing a cloth inside a funnel.

You may be thinking “Wow, that’s a lot of pepper”, and yes, it is.  Unlike modern mulled wine recipes, hippocras typically did contain a lot of pepper or grains of paradise, which taste similar to pepper.  It also seems to have been drunk at room temperature, not heated.


What’s it like?

Surprising, and I mean that in a good way.  Hippocras tastes unusual to a 21st century palate, because we're not used to the combination of pepper, ginger, and wine.  But it's an enjoyable drink full of complex flavours that complement the wine nicely.  If you consider your wine pairings, you’ll find spicy foods are often suggested as a pairing for different styles of rosé wine.  Peppery, spicy flavours work very well with the right choice of wine.

The pepper isn't as noticeable as you'd think, but it's definitely there and it gives the drink a pleasant level of heat, while the ginger and cinnamon enhance the wine's fruit flavours.

Personally, I think it could use a little more cinnamon and nutmeg, so measure those generously if you make the recipe.  I would also be inclined to skip the sugar next time, or perhaps to use honey instead.


Red wine in the Middle Ages

For the best approximation of a 14th century hippocras, I suggest choosing a rosé instead of a red.  This is because medieval red wines were very different from the reds we enjoy today.  They were pale coloured, more like a modern rosé, and fairly low in alcohol.  They were also drunk very young.  Medieval people preferred to drink new wine where possible because the wine tended to be poor quality by today’s standards, and it didn’t age well.

Apparently darker coloured wines were considered desirable, and there are several extant recipes for using food colouring to improve the colour of wine.  Shortly after his hippocras recipe, Pichon supplied a recipe for making white wine appear red:

TO MAKE WHITE WINE RED AT THE TABLE, take in summer the red flowers which grow in the wheat, called rose-mallow and other names, and let them dry until they crumble into powder, and secretly drop them in the glass with the wine, and it will turn red.

Did this really fool people into thinking they were drinking red wine?  Medieval wine must have been very different from 21st century wine if colour was the only way people could tell whether they were drinking white or red.  Even with a lot of spices in there, it should be possible to tell the difference.  I now have many, many questions about just what exactly wine was like in the 14th century.

Anyway, back to the hippocras.  Despite the variable quality of medieval wine, hippocras wasn't intended to mask the taste of bad wine.  No one would want to waste expensive spices on bad wine, and some recipes specifically suggested using high quality wine if it was available.  In the Middle Ages high quality meant fruity young wine with a deep, rich colour; in a modern context I recommend a full-bodied wine at the sweeter end of the spectrum.


The Historical Food Fortnightly challenge: Solstice.

The receipt/recipe: Hippocras from Le Ménagier de Paris.

The date/year and region: 14th - 15th century France.

How did you make it: See above.

Time to complete: 20 minutes.

Total cost: $10.99 for a bottle of Peter Yealands merlot rosé.

How successful was it?  I like it!  This is definitely something I'll make again and, as an added bonus, you can get suitable wines very cheap if you shop carefully.

How accurate is it? I used a 14th century recipe and tried to choose a wine similar to what I think was used in period, but I'm not an expert in medieval wines and therefore I'm not sure how well the taste matches 14th century hippocras.